Garth Hudson, the band’s talented keyboardist and all-round musician, who used a unique palette of sounds and styles to add a conversational touch to rock standards like “Up on Cripple Creek,” “The Weight” and “Rag Mama Rag.” Died at the age of 87.
Hudson was the largest and last surviving member of the influential group that once backed Bob Dylan. His death was confirmed Tuesday by The Canadian Press, citing Hudson’s friend Jan Haust. Additional details were not immediately available. Hudson was living in a nursing home in upstate New York.
A rustic man with a huge forehead and spreading beard, Hudson was a classically trained performer and self-taught Greek chorus who spoke through piano, synthesizers, horns, and his favorite Lowrey organ. No matter the song, Hudson summoned just the right feeling or shade, whether the tippy clavinet and wah-wah pedal on “Up on Cripple Creek,” the galloping piano on “Rag Mama Rag” or the twangy piano on “It Makes No Difference.” Sad saxophone.”
The only non-singer among the five musicians, renowned for his harmony, texture and versatility, Hudson appeared mostly in the background, but he had one showcase: “Chest Fever,” a Robbie Robertson composition for which he provided an introductory organ solo. Prepared (“The Genetic Method”), an eclectic sample of moods and melodies that coalesce into the song’s hard rock riff.
Robertson, the band’s guitarist and main songwriter, died in 2023 after a long illness. Keyboardist-drummer Richard Manuel hanged himself in 1986, bassist Rick Danko died in his sleep in 1999, and drummer Levon Helm died of cancer in 2012. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
Formed in the early 1960s as the backing group for rocker Ronnie Hawkins, the band was originally called The Hawks and consisted of Arkansas-born Helm and four Canadians recruited by Helm and Hawkins: Hudson, Danko, Manuel and Robertson.
The band perfected their craft by performing as unknowns for years – first behind Hawkins, then as Levon and the Hawks, then as vulnerable targets of outrage after joining forces with Dylan in the mid-1960s. In. All joined Dylan on his historic tours of 1965–66 (Helm left midway), when he broke with his folk past and teamed up with the band to create some of the most provocative and stormy music of the era, Which angered some longtime Dylan fans but attracted many. A new one. The group changed its name to the Band in part because many people around Dylan referred to his backing musicians simply as “the Band”.
By 1967, Dylan was in semi-solitude, having reportedly broken his neck in a motorcycle accident, and he and his group settled in the artist community in Woodstock, which would become world famous two years later due to the festival in nearby Bethel. Went. Without any plans for an album, they wrote and played spontaneously in an old pink house outside the city shared by Hudson, Danko, and Manuel. Hudson was in charge of the tape machine as Dylan and The Band recorded over 100 songs, which for years were available only as bootlegs, which became known as “The Basement Tapes”. Often cited as the foundation of “roots” music and “Americana”, this music ranges from old folk, country and Appalachian songs to songs such as “Tears of Rage,” “I Shall Be Released” and “These Wheels on Fire.” Even new creations are different. ,
“There will be an informal discussion before each recording,” Hudson told online publication Something Else! in 2014. “There’ll be ideas floating around and stories told. And then we’ll go back to the songs.
“We looked for words, phrases and situations that were appropriate to write about. I think Bob Dylan showed us discipline and a deep concern about the quality of his art.”
Dylan re-emerged in late 1967 with “John Wesley Harding” and the band soon followed with “Music from Big Pink”, its housey sound so radically different from the jams and psychedelic tricks that the Beatles were using at the time. Artists ranging from Eric Clapton to the Grateful Dead would cite its influence. The band released a self-titled album in 1969, which is still considered by many to be their best and is often ranked among the greatest rock albums of all time.
Future records included “Stage Fright,” “Cahoots” and “Northern Lights/Southern Cross,” a 1975 album that brought Hudson particular praise for his work on keyboards. A year later, Robertson decided he was tired of performing live, and the band staged an all-star concert and the Martin Scorsese film “The Last Waltz”, featuring Dylan, Clapton, Neil Young and many others. . Tension between Robertson and Helm, who accused Robertson of elevating others in the film, led to a full breakup in 1978, before the documentary’s release.
Hudson performed briefly with the English band The Call; Appeared with various later incarnations of the band, usually consisting of Danko, Hudson and Helm; The solo albums were assisted by Robertson and Danko; and joined Danko and Helm for a performance of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” at the Berlin Wall. Other session work included records for Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen and Emmylou Harris.
Hudson also conducted her own projects, although her first solo effort, “From the Sea to the North”, came out on the day of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. In 2005, he wrote The Best! He formed a 12-piece band called, in which his wife sang. “Garth Hudson Presents: A Canadian Celebration of the Band” was a 2010 tribute featuring Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn, and other Canadian musicians.
In recent years, Hudson has struggled financially. He sold his interest in the band to Robertson and went bankrupt several times. He lost one of his homes due to foreclosure and put many of his belongings up for auction in 2013 when he could no longer afford to pay for storage. Hudson’s wife, Maude, died in 2022. They had a daughter, Tammy Zoe Hill.
The son of musicians, Hudson was born in Windsor, Ontario in 1937 and received formal training at an early age. He was performing on stage and writing before he was a teenager, although by the age of 20 he had become disillusioned with classical music and was playing in a rock band, the Capers.
He was the last person to join the band and was worried that his parents would disapprove. The solution was for Hawkins to hire him as a “music consultant” and pay him an extra $10 a week.
In a 2002 interview with Maclean’s, Hudson said of the band, “It was a job.” “Play stadiums, play theaters. My job was to provide arrangements of pads, pads and fills behind good poets. The same poems every night.”
